When Chase Hawk asked if I’d be down to tag along and snap some photos while he and Joe Simon filmed for an Oakley project, I said “yes” faster than I could put on some Frogskins or Enduros.

So… off we went, early morning ’til night. I shadow’d Chase and Joe as the whole thing went down and casually snapped away. Watching both of these guys put in work was awesome and I think the video came out damn good, which is what I expected. Joe had the whole thing story-boarded and Chase repeated tricks on demand like a G.

With that said, click below to eyeball some behind the scenes photos of Chase’s Oakley video courtesy of yours truly.

Are you new to Defgrip? Just started checking the site over the last year or 2? Well, time to catch up on some sweet original content our crew have produced. If you’ve been with us since the beginning, there’s no harm in revisiting these again. Either way, we appreciate ya.

Harrison Boyce and Andrew McMullen have sat down with some interesting BMX & NON-BMX characters for video interviews starting back in 2008. These interviews were pretty different for BMX at the time and I think they did a good job at connecting you with these people (I didn’t produce them so I can say that, ha). Subjects include Ruben Alcantara, Cory Nastazio (probably the most talked about Original), Greyboy, The History of Oakley and much much much more…

In this short film documenting Oakley’s Josh Harrington’s trip to the seemingly cold and desolate Northern European state of Estonia for the Simpel Session contest, we experience in his own words the solidarity of self-awareness of traveling to a foreign country, unable to adjust to your surroundings while still having to focus on putting himself in the mindset of riding in front of thousands of people on a BMX bike.

This past year, I got the chance to go down to the Oakley headquarters in California to check out the re-issue of the infamous B-1B grip that Oakley was working on. While I was down there, I took the opportunity to put together a video giving a little history and background to the brand. Oakley is a company that does a billion dollars a year in sales, has stores all over the world, and has created some of the most iconic eyewear of my generation… and I’m pretty sure not many people know that Oakley started out by making BMX grips.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Bell, a former AMA Supercross champion and employee of Oakley who started in 1985, to tell the story of how Oakley went from a small grip company to one of the biggest eyewear brands in the world.

To go along with the Oakley / Chase Hawk video, Chad Moore shot a series of photos that follow the theme of the project. Documenting Chase on and off his bike the photos capture what went down over the span of a few days this past summer in Austin, TX.